how to keep going when you’re not sure what’s next

there are seasons of life when the path ahead feels like fogged-up glass. you know there’s something on the other side — some version of you, some next chapter — but you can’t see it clearly yet. and instead of feeling excited about the possibilities, you feel stuck between who you were and who you might become. it’s the strange, aching stillness of not having an answer to the questions that wake you up at night: what am i supposed to do now? what if i make the wrong choice? what if i stay here forever, waiting for clarity that never comes?

uncertainty has a way of shrinking your world. it makes the smallest decisions feel impossibly heavy. should i stay or leave? should i start something new or wait for the “right” time? and what even counts as the right time? we’re so conditioned to chase milestones, to treat life like a ladder we climb, that we forget how to live when the next rung isn’t visible. the cultural obsession with direction — with knowing, planning, executing — leaves very little space for the messy, undefined chapters where nothing seems to move. but what if those chapters are just as essential? what if this pause, this sense of being stuck, is not a detour but the groundwork for something you can’t yet name?

we are taught to believe that life should unfold in a straight line — a series of neatly linked steps that prove we’re moving forward. but life rarely moves like that. it’s not a perfect sequence. it’s a loop, a spiral, a series of sideways steps that don’t make sense until you look back years later. we measure our progress against timelines that were never ours to begin with: graduate by this age, fall in love by that age, be “successful” by thirty. when those milestones slip out of reach, we panic. we feel like failures, even when we’re just living in the natural rhythm of a life that doesn’t follow a script.

when i look back on the moments of my life that changed me most, they often began in a place of not knowing. the friendships that saved me were rarely planned. the jobs that turned into stepping stones were often the ones i took on a whim, when i wasn’t looking for anything “serious.” the projects that shaped me were born in moments when i wasn’t thinking about success at all — i was just curious. there’s a strange kind of magic in not knowing. but the magic is hard to see when you’re in it. when you’re in the fog, all you want is to see the horizon.

sometimes we wait for clarity before we act, as if a perfect map will suddenly appear and tell us exactly where to go. but clarity doesn’t come before action. it comes after. it comes from doing something — anything — and learning from it, even if it’s not the “right” thing. there’s a quote by joan didion that i come back to often: “i have already lost touch with a couple of people i used to be.” and maybe that’s what life is — a slow series of becoming someone new, without always knowing when the shift is happening. you only realize it later, when you look back and see how far you’ve come.

so maybe you don’t need to know what’s next to keep going. maybe you just need to know the next small step. the next thing that feels alive in your hands. the next thing that doesn’t make sense to anyone but you. i think we forget how powerful small steps are. we think our lives have to be built on big, impressive moves, but most of the time it’s the quiet, almost invisible shifts that shape who we become.

when everything feels uncertain, the small rituals matter more than you realize. making your bed, brewing coffee slowly, taking a walk without your phone, writing three lines in a journal just to remember what your own voice sounds like. these aren’t grand solutions, but they are grounding. they remind you that even when you don’t know the big answers, you can create small moments of meaning. i remember a year of my life where i felt entirely lost — i didn’t know what i wanted, i didn’t even know who i was anymore. but i had this one habit of sitting by my window every morning with tea, just watching the world wake up. it didn’t fix anything, but it gave me a rhythm, and sometimes a rhythm is enough to carry you until the bigger answers arrive.

we live in a culture that worships productivity. every day you’re expected to be moving, building, growing. but what no one tells you is that some seasons of life are meant for staying still. for watching and listening. for letting yourself fall apart so you can come back together differently. staying still doesn’t mean nothing is happening — it means something deeper is happening beneath the surface. think of how a seed grows. for months it’s buried underground, invisible. and then one day it pushes through, and suddenly it looks like a miracle. but the miracle began long before anyone could see it.

we rarely talk about the courage it takes to live in uncertainty without forcing answers. there’s a pressure to label everything, to define your purpose, to have a story about where you’re going. but what if the story is still being written? what if the hardest and most necessary thing you can do right now is to give yourself time to not know? to let yourself be unfinished? maybe this is where the real becoming happens — not in the moments when everything makes sense, but in the seasons when nothing does.

and then there’s the fear of falling behind. it’s impossible not to compare yourself to other people, especially in a world where everyone’s milestones are on display. you see people getting promotions, moving cities, falling in love, starting families, building something shiny and impressive, and you can’t help but wonder if you’re doing something wrong. but comparison is a distortion. no one posts the nights they spent crying because they didn’t know what they were doing either. no one shares the weeks they spent doubting every decision. everyone’s timeline looks clearer in hindsight. the truth is, no one really knows what they’re doing. some people are just better at pretending.

the other day i read a line in a book by maggie smith: “keep moving. even when you’re not sure. especially when you’re not sure.” and it struck me because so much of life is exactly that — moving forward without a guarantee that it will all work out. we like to believe that certainty is the foundation for action, but more often, action is what creates certainty. it’s like walking through fog — the only way to see more of the road is to keep walking. you can’t wait for perfect visibility before you take the first step.

there are days when even taking a step feels impossible. when your mind is clouded and your body feels heavy and the idea of doing anything feels pointless. and on those days, i hope you remember that survival itself is enough. you don’t need to have a grand plan. you don’t need to be reinventing yourself every day. sometimes all you need is to take care of your basic needs — eat something warm, drink water, rest, go outside for a few minutes. your worth is not measured by how much you accomplish in these seasons. sometimes your only job is to keep showing up.

looking back, some of my most “directionless” chapters were also the most transformative. i didn’t see it at the time, but being lost taught me resilience. it taught me to trust myself even when i didn’t have evidence that things would work out. it taught me that life is not about having a five-year plan — it’s about learning to adapt when the plan falls apart. and it will fall apart, more than once. but that’s not failure. that’s just being human.

if you feel lost right now, i want to tell you something that i wish someone had told me: being lost doesn’t mean you’re broken. it doesn’t mean you’re behind. it doesn’t mean you’re doing life wrong. it just means you’re in a chapter where the answers haven’t arrived yet. and that’s okay. you don’t have to have all the answers to live a meaningful life. you just have to keep showing up for yourself in small ways — the walks, the journaling, the little rituals that remind you who you are. you just have to trust that clarity is not something you find overnight, but something that grows slowly as you live.

the truth is, life is not made of answers. it’s made of moments. and most of those moments are small and ordinary and easy to overlook. but when you string them together, they create a life — your life. maybe you don’t know what’s next right now. maybe you’re scared you’ll never figure it out. but one day you’ll look back on this season and see that even here, even in the fog, you were moving. you were building something. you were becoming someone new.